My review of the Virgin Clubhouse at London Heathrow Terminal 3 (part 2)

There are four other corners of the Clubhouse lounge that I didn’t cover in part 1. This is the library which is meant to be a quiet area:

This is the nearest Virgin gets to a business centre – a handful of laptops in the middle of the room:

To the left hand side of the lounge is a flight of stairs. Go up and you find yourself in a secluded seating area. I sat here for 20 minutes doing the interview with the Daily Express which appeared recently.

Take another flight of stairs and you find yourself somewhere very unexpected – a roof terrace!

Due to the joys of the Summer 2016 weather it wasn’t somewhere that anyone was choosing to linger but I can imagine it is a pleasant spot to use on a sunny day.

The restaurant

Finally, I want to talk about the restaurant. This is an open plan area in the lounge, although the layout means that you don’t have people walking past you all the time. Service was attentive but casual in a typical Virgin style.

I haven’t mentioned the bar in this review but, trust me, there is one, it is very long and it seems to stock pretty much anything you could possibly want!

Back in 1997, I remember the lounge having a sound proof room with some very expensive hi-fi equipment in it. You could put on a CD, crank up the volume and take a seat in a comfy armchair. That seems to have gone which is a shame.

Conclusion

You can, in general, believe the hype about the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at Heathrow. Excellent food, a great bar, lots of space, the novel roof terrace, a free haircut and a sauna and jacuzzi (and a table tennis table) – you need to be pretty churlish not to find fun in that lot.

It could be better, of course. A few bottles of Krug or Dom Perignon, a better kids playroom, a broader magazine selection, a full buffet for people who don’t have the time or inclination to sit in the restaurant ….. you can always add something else.

Making more of the spa treatments free would also be good, although to be fair Etihad has just gone down the same route and started charging for most of the treatments in its Heathrow lounge. British Airways still has free ‘mini’ treatments but they are nowhere near as comprehensive as what Virgin offers.

The Virgin Heathrow Clubhouse should definitely be on your airline bucket list. In a few days I’ll tell you whether I believe that the Upper Class in-flight product should be on your list too ….

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Comments

I have just about built up enough points for an Upper Class redemption for myself and wife so I am looking at destinations like Cancun as the jump off point for a trip to Yucatan. Unfortunately, Virgin flies out of Gatwick to Cancun, so we would only get the Gatwick Virgin clubhouse.

This is the only Upper Class flight we will take in the forseeable future, so the question is whether we would be missing out by flying out of Gatwick. Should I make a point of flying out of Heathrow just to experience the main clubhouse?

I’d disagree – I had the same dilemma with heading to the Caribbean. I desperately wanted to try out the Heathrow clubhouse, but when I was almost ready to book, I realised my planned destination of St Lucia goes from Gatwick.

After a bit of scouting around, I found cheap return flights from JFK to Turks & Caicos instead for only slightly more than 200 quid, and spent 20,000 fewer flying club miles on a upper redemption to JFK, which seemed like a fair deal, especially considering the beaches in T&C look incredible!

Have a look at the 80,000 return destinations, and see if you can find a bargainous flight to Mexico. Good luck!

I went diving off Cozumel for a couple of weeks (with Cancun as nearest). Cancun itself is a bit of a hole but as the gateway to somewhere else, no problems at all. Cozumel also gets over-run by our pondy cousins but as I was mostly 20 metres under, not an issue.

Though the LGW Clubhouse doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of its LHR cousin, it isn’t so far behind that I’d change my destination. Indeed some on VS travel forums prefer the LGW CH based on the attitude of the staff who always seem genuinely happy that you are there and about to go on holiday.

A “new” CH will open in January 2017 when VS move their operations to the North Terminal.

I much prefer the virgin ground experience in UC to BA in 1st
Drive through arrival. Shellac nails done (pay for). sometimes haircut, always facial
Shoeshine. Magazines you might want to read (you must have been unlucky-they are usually good- unlike BA who have titles such as 1001 horses and yachts of the world etc)
Pick up a spare clear bag from scanning and fill it up with pick and mix (someone above suggests that it has gone- it was there in May?)
Deli is fab. Ice-cream, Bramble cocktails.
The loos are lovely (unlike the CCR where they are a disgrace)
There is a pool table.
The outdoor area is the old vodka bar, at one point it had artificial grass- that may have been wimbledon linked
The table tennis may have been a wimbledon thing? Not sure it is all year round.
Children seem to like the hanging chairs

BA Champagne is better in CCR but overall Virgin wins hands down on the ground.
I arrive about 6 hours before the flight to fit it all in- longer if I want my hair done.